


It Goes On

by thedevilchicken



Category: Lost Boys (1987)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood Drinking, Codependency, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Minor Injuries, Post-Canon, Sibling Incest, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 10:13:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7636234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once the vampires are dead, Michael isn't quite as fixed as everyone thinks he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Goes On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Etnoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/gifts).



Sam isn't sure when he realized. But once he did, everything started to fall into place. 

Michael was distant, after, when the vampires were gone, and Sam guessed that made sense because, well, shit, he'd just come pretty damn close to becoming a creature of the night and jeez, the way he looked at it, it wasn't even like those guys'd been snappy dressers to make up for it. Then pretty soon after that Star and Laddie moved away 'cause it turned out she was one of those faces you'd see on the side of milk cartons and taped to streetlights and she had family someplace that wasn't Cali, grandparents on her father's side or an aunt or something who wouldn't call her deadbeat mom and tell her where she was. When she left, she wouldn't even say where she was going to. She didn't want anyone to follow 'cause she said she needed a fresh start. Sam kinda wondered if maybe they all did.

It made sense that Michael was distant after that bullshit because Sam knew he'd liked her from the start. Maybe he'd even loved her, though Sam still has no idea how it is you love some girl, some guy, some person you just met like fifteen minutes ago across a crowded room. Sam thinks you really need to know a guy, a girl, a person, for that. 

It made sense in the start but then that distance stretched on for months. Michael went to school when school started back and the tourists went home after the season was through and Sam would pass him in hallways between classes but he barely even looked up half the time. He stuck around for dinner most nights, helped out with getting the family home back together at weekends, got real good with plumbing and wiring and kept his mouth shut, nails between his lips as an excuse not to speak while he hammered, and Sam bitched 'cause he hated that shit. He'd never wanted to leave Phoenix and they all knew it 'cause he told them so so often, in the start, and he made a shitty workman but the way Mike kept his head down and did as he was told, you'd've thought Santa Carla was right where he wanted to be. Maybe by then it was.

And then, at night, Mike went out. Sam heard him leave from across the hall and sometimes he didn't come back till morning. Sometimes he didn't come back at all and the next day Sam would see him shuffling down the hall at school like the living dead, like Santa Carla had gone ahead and spit up zombies to replace all the newly-staked vampires. Sometimes Sam caught up to Michael by his locker while he was ditching his big-ass chem text to head to English or something instead, and Michael would smile and say, "I'm fine, Sam, trust me," even when that wasn't even the question he'd asked, and the smile never reached his eyes anyway. They he'd walk away and Sam would stand there with his back pressed up to Michael's locker door and he'd watch him go 'cause he knew he couldn't stop him going. He'd tried. He'd failed. He'd thought he'd been going to lose his brother to the vamps that summer, then he'd thought he'd gotten him back. It turned out he'd lost him anyway, vamps or no vamps.

Some nights, when Mike left, Sam tried to follow him. It was always a lousy damn idea 'cause Mike had his bike and all Sam had was his beat-up pair of Nikes he was already growing out of. By Thanksgiving that year, he was a couple inches taller, a shoe size bigger, and he liked to think his shoulders had gotten just a bit broader along with it, too. It was crazy, Sam thought, had always thought, still thinks, how he and Mike looked so damn different when their mom said they had the same dad, deadbeat asshole that he was, but they _were_ different, they _are_ different: Michael has brown hair and Sam's a blond, Sam tans in the sun and Michael burns, Michael's taller and Sam shorter, even their faces are structured different. Hell, it wasn't even like they were years apart to explain it, either, 'cause Mike turned eighteen before Christmas that year and by the time summer came around again, three days after Michael's high school graduation with his C average and his shitty GPA where he'd always worked hard at school and gotten Bs, after a whole year of Mike being a shitty liar when Sam asked him how he was doing, Sam turned seventeen. Mike had always said he'd teach him how to shave, but grandpa did it. Sam didn't even resent the fact, he was just disappointed.

So, maybe it was that second summer when Sam realized or maybe it'd been coming on slowly for a while by then. Michael got himself a job fixing shit up at the boardwalk that paid next to nothing but hell, at least it was a job, and it least it paid him something. Sam spent some time with the Frog brothers 'cause after the whole vampire thing it just hadn't been so stunningly easy to make new friends. He bummed around the comic book store selling junk to kids till the brothers' parents started paying him for it and at lunch, whenever lunch was 'cause it wasn't like they kept regular business hours, he tried to track down Michael. 

Sometimes he found him painting a fence or hammering down replacement boards. Sometimes he found him staring at a sandwich like processed cheese on white bread had ever been that goddamn fascinating in the history of mankind at large. Sometimes they sat together while Sam ate his tunafish sub, while Sam talked with his mouth full, and sometimes he liked to think Mike listened. Sometimes, Sam sat on a bench nearby and ate while he watched Mike do his job, painting on the top top of ladders, nailing shit down on his knees. It wasn't glamorous and there was always a streak of sunburn right across Mike's cheeks and nose, even when he remembered to wear sunblock. Mostly, he forgot. A lot of things didn't seem to matter to Michael anymore. 

And then one day Sam sat down on a bench on the boardwalk to eat his tunafish the same way he did every day and he caught his hand on a nail sticking up out of the wood. He cursed under his breath - their mom wouldn't've been proud, let's say - and pressed a napkin to his bloodied-up palm. Michael looked up from his fence-painting. Mike's eyes zeroed in on Sam's hand, blood already soaking through the napkin paper and dripping to the boards beneath his feet. 

"Well, shit," Sam said, his eyes going wide, and Michael looked away quickly, back to the work he was doing. Sam shook his head and said _shit_ again like that in any way improved the situation and then he left, his lunch sitting untouched on the bench. He got a tetanus shot and a couple stitches at the walk-in clinic in town 'cause Mrs. Frog told him to take the afternoon off and then he went back home - who the hell knew when grandpa's creepy old shack-o'-taxidermy had become home, but somehow it had - and he drank a whole damn carton of OJ at the kitchen table without really thinking about it while Nanook slept on his foot and sent it to sleep, too. 

"Shit," he said, again, under his breath in case mom was home and he just hadn't noticed her somehow. "It didn't work."

He didn't tell the Frogs. He didn't tell them that night on the phone or the next day at work in the comic book store or after that, when Mr. and Mrs. Frog invited him to dinner that night. He was pretty sure they thought he was some kind of a good influence, no dirty leather jacket or greasy hair, no loud punk music in the store while he thought they weren't there like their sons did, a straight A student, maybe he'd even apply to colleges next school year. He was quiet at dinner, though, and Edgar just talked about some girl he'd met on the boardwalk reading Superman with her shoes off and how maybe it was love at first sight. All Sam could think of was Michael and Star and how much of a dumbass he'd been to think that shit with Michael, a whole year of it, had been about a girl he'd barely known. He excused himself politely before dessert. He went home. 

They'd never gotten a TV after. All the kids at school were playing Nintendo and Sam spent his evenings doing homework for school and reading comics. He had a stack of dogeared back issues of Detective Comics the Frogs had given him instead of tossing them out that he'd been working his way through for weeks, but it was pretty hard to concentrate that night and in the end he asked his mom if he could borrow her car and go down to the boardwalk and who knew, maybe he'd even find Mike there since he apparently hadn't come home for dinner while Sam was out. Grandpa had been coming up with tall tales of Michael being moody over some new girl, some hypothetical girl no one had seen who probably looked a lot like Star in their heads, but Sam knew better. When his mom gave him her keys, he didn't even bother with the boardwalk. He went straight out to the cave because it was pretty damn obvious that was where he'd been going. He'd never needed to follow him to know that. 

"Hey Mikey, you in here?" Sam called as he made his way in, the biggest flashlight he could find in one hand and half a table leg carved into a point in the other. He'd told himself while he sawed it down out in the garage that it was in case of emergency, like if there were more vamps down there that they'd missed somehow, but he knew it was just in case of something else instead, something he didn't like to think of, a possibility he didn't even want to consider. Hell, he wasn't even sure he could've done it if he'd needed to, so the whole thing was just to make him feel better.

He found Michael lying in a bed, eyes closed like maybe he was sleeping, and Sam guessed maybe the year before, the summer before, he'd been there with Star. Maybe he'd _been_ there with Star, too, which made sense in a way. She'd been real pretty. Mike had almost gotten himself turned into goddamn Nosferatu for her, so Sam perversely hoped the sex had been worth it. He figured it probably hadn't.

"I'm not a vampire, Sam," Michael said, and when he opened his eyes they were blue just like they should've been. When he smiled tightly, he'd got regular teeth and not vampire fangs. 

"You know I saw you today, Mike," Sam replied, approaching with caution, though he was pretty sure he looked just about as non-sneaky as Nanook stealing snacks off of the coffee table. 

"I know, and I'm sorry, but I'm not a vampire."

Sam squirted him right in the face with his holy water squirtgun. Michael blew water off of his lips and rubbed it out of his eyes. 

"Jeez, what did I just say?" he said, not that he sounded pissed. He just sounded kinda sad and kinda hollow, like he had all year long, since summer. 

"Then what's wrong with you?" Sam asked. 

Michael sat up and he leaned back against the headboard. "I have no clue," he said. "I guess I burn real easy but I don't need sunglasses all the time like I did before. I'm tired all the time but I can't sleep. And I've got no appetite for sandwiches at lunch or mom's meatloaf or broccoli, but..." He closed his eyes again. He sighed. He didn't need to continue. It looked like he couldn't.

Sam smiled grimly. "But you're _hungry_ , right?"

Mike clenched his jaw, his eyes still closed. He nodded. 

Sam didn't ask him what that meant besides the obvious 'cause it was pretty clear that neither of them knew - the comics never said anything about that vampire shit sticking around after the head vamp was toast. Michael should've been cured and maybe he had been but he wasn't all the way, that much was pretty clear now. So Sam didn't say it'd be okay 'cause he knew idle dumbass platitudes like that would get them nowhere and neither of them would've believed a word of it anyhow. What he did was go over there and sit down on the edge of the bed. He dropped the shittily-fashioned stake on the floor with a clatter that made Michael open up his eyes again and then he pulled the bandage off of his hand while Michael watched and frowned at him. Before Mike could object, before he could've even known he _should_ object, Sam tore out his stitches with a wince and a curse and then he watched the blood well up again, maybe even more than before. Then he held out his hand to Michael, blood dripping down his wrist, and to Mike's credit he looked at least half as repulsed by it as he looked fucking ravenous. 

"What the hell, Sam?" he said, but his eyes were on the blood. It didn't look like he could've torn them away if he'd tried, and he didn't try.

Sam shifted closer, like that was his answer. Mike took Sam's wrist in one hand and for a second he looked at him, glanced at him, looked him in the eye, _desperate_ though Sam had no idea what he wanted him to do except exactly what he was doing. And then he put his mouth to Sam's hand and he licked the blood away and when he was done, when he was finished tonguing the wound in his palm, sucking at it till it stung like an SOB, he pulled back with his eyes screwed shut and grimaced like it hurt. His teeth were smeared with blood - _Sam's_ blood. It made Sam's pulse skip like adrenaline in his veins for no damn reason he could think of but then Michael's eyes opened and his mouth closed and jeez, when he looked at him, when Michael's eyes focused in on him, he smiled just kinda faintly. For a second, it was like he'd gotten his brother back. Maybe it hadn't been all that high a price to pay.

They stayed there twenty minutes, maybe thirty, sat shoulder to shoulder up against the headboard, then Sam said, "Let's go home, bro," and Michael nodded to agree. They went home and Michael washed out Sam's cut and stuck butterfly strips over it from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and then he bandaged it up almost as good as before. And then they went to bed across the hall from each other and Sam tried not to think about the fact his not-totally-human brother had just totally drunk his blood. It should've turned his stomach. He wasn't sure what it did.

In the morning, Michael came out of the bathroom post-shower in a towel and a smile and flicked water at Sam from his bedroom doorway. They ate lunch together at the boardwalk though Mike didn't touch his cheese sandwich and when they got home after work, they played a really shitty game of chess sitting on Sam's bedroom floor. They both only half remembered the rules and Nanook walked by and swept over half the pieces with his tail but somehow that didn't stop them, and then they went to bed. He heard Michael's door open maybe an hour later, and this time he was kinda strangely unprepared for it, felt it like a jab straight to his gut. He realized he'd half expected Michael wouldn't need to go out there again. Jeez, what an ass he'd been to believe that. 

The next night, he was prepared. He'd heard Mike leave and he went back to sleep though really all he had in his head was his blood all over Michael's teeth, the way Mike's mouth had felt against his hand, his breath hot, his tongue against his skin, his fingers tight around his wrist. The next night it was the same thing and the same again the night after, pretending like it didn't bother him that Mike was turning distant again just like he had the first time except ten times worse somehow now he'd seen the old Mike was still in there. He was in there but he was fading away.

Sam was pretty sure the situation variously sucked and blew and it wasn't even like he could go to the store in the morning and say, _hey, guys, I think my brother's acting like a dick 'cause he's maybe not not a vampire after all_. They'd've staked the shit out of him and Jesus Christ, Michael was his brother for the love of Pete. He wasn't gonna let anyone stake him, especially not when he wasn't _not_ a vampire but he wasn't really even half of one like he'd been before, either. He had a reflection in the mirror. Holy water didn't work. He was pretty much human, Sam guessed, except there were a few little...quirks. But shit, it wasn't like they could go on living like that, either, not while Mike walked around like he lived on a whole different planet from the rest of humanity and jeez, Sam knew the grim little secret to why he was that way was the poor guy was hungry. Feeding him and expecting it all to be okay had been such a rookie mistake he could've kicked himself. Sam guessed he'd been used to the hunger and then he'd gone and fed him so then he had to get used to it all over again. Turned out he'd only made it worse. 

The fifth night, Sam sneaked out early. He'd borrowed Edgar's bike, or kinda rented it for the night by agreeing to cover his Saturday morning opening shift at the store, and he bicycled his goddamn way all the way out to the cliff, the hotel, and sat himself down on the bed there to wait. Mike wasn't long coming. Sam had picked his spot well.

"What are you doing here, Sam?" Michael asked, as he made his way across the room, but Sam doubted he could've sounded angry about it if he'd tried. 

"This shit has got to stop," Sam replied, like that somehow explained it all, and Michael frowned because it _didn't_ explain it all. So Sam took a out a penknife from his pants pocket and before Michael could react he'd opened up the cut in his palm again. The only way Michael could've possibly reacted after he'd done it was to go right over there to where Sam was sitting on the edge of the bed. The only thing he could do was go down on his knees right in front of him, his jeans in the dust, and take Sam's wrist in one hand and his fingers in the other. He licked at his palm. He sucked at his palm. He fucking _sobbed_ against his palm. And when he was done he rested his forehead against Sam's wrist, breathing unsteady breaths. When Sam looked down, he guessed he understood what the problem was because Jesus, _Jesus_ , Michael was half-hard in his jeans with a wet spot soaking through the denim. He'd come from it. Maybe he had the first time, too, and Sam just hadn't noticed. Somehow that thought was pretty unsettling.

Sam got it, he really did. He got that it was some kind of twisted-ass physiological reaction, like Superman and kryptonite except green K had never made Kal-El come in his tight red pants. It wasn't personal, it wasn't _him_ \- it would've happened with anyone, if he'd drunk Edgar's blood or Mr. Holloway's the middle-aged dude from third period chem class or even the Widow Johnson's though who knew, they'd still not met her, maybe she was twenty-one years old and looked a lot like Molly Ringwald for all they knew. He got it but it was a lot like Michael didn't so he ran the fingers of his other hand over Michael's hair like maybe that'd help - who the hell knew, he was a teenage virgin who didn't even watch TV so his basis for that assumption was pretty much zilch - but Michael couldn't even look at him. In the end, he had to practically drag his ass up off of the floor by the front of his shirt. Sam figured he probably would've stayed there all night if he'd let him, right there, on his knees. 

The next couple of days were great after that, somehow, however unlikely that'd seemed, 'cause Michael was back again just like before. But this time Sam knew not to trust it when they clowned around just like old times, when they wandered the boardwalk after dark and lay on Sam's bed talking about Phoenix like it was a million years since they'd left. It was like he'd gotten his brother back, sure, but Sam was pretty sure it couldn't last. When Michael started coming down again, mom started asking if Sam thought maybe his big brother was on drugs, maybe someone sold down at the boardwalk, and Sam said hell, she'd probably know best, ex-hippie and whatever, she'd probably been smashed through half the seventies. He said he was sorry right away and she said she understood because Michael's behavior was getting to all of them and sure, it was, Sam was irritable because of it, but he could see it was getting to Michael most of all. He hadn't asked for any of this but there it was and jeez, the next day when he caught him staring slack-jawed at some lady's neck like she was lunch and not the shitty cheese sandwich, he knew it was time again. It was pretty much past time. He knew what he had to do.

He went out to the hotel again that night. He went 'cause he told himself it was kinda his fault because hey, before he'd gotten the bright idea to feed him, Mike hadn't had blood in a year, and now he looked hungrier than ever. So he rode Edgar's shitty mountain bike with the slipping chain all the way out there again and he guessed at least he was getting in some exercise and when he went in, there was Michael. There was Michael with a girl. There was Michael _naked_ with a girl. Somehow that didn't seem right, Sam thought, standing there, just picking up some girl whose name he bet Michael didn't even know and taking her there, and somehow it wasn't just because of the danger Sam figured she was in. So he coughed, cleared his throat pretty loudly, and they both looked at him across the room. The girl practically levitated off of the bed she got up so damn quickly and hell, she must've been some kind of damn Olympic sprinter with how fast she was outta there after that. 

"What are you doing here, Sam?" Michael asked, rubbing his eyes. He was on his knees in the bed, buck naked except for the earring he'd never taken out, like that even counted, and there was a condom on his dick though Sam was pretty sure that counted even less. He guessed at least he'd planned to use protection.

"I don't know, Michael," Sam replied. "What was _she_ doing here?"

Michael looked at him sharply, or at least as sharply as he could manage in his shitty condition. "You think I wanted to kill her?"

Sam shrugged widely, his hands upturned in the air. "Gee, Mike, let me think about that," he said. "Yeah, pretty much."

"So why are you here?"

"'Cause you're my brother, Mike," he said. "'Cause I miss you. I'm here to help."

Michael dropped his head into his hands. And maybe Sam should've turned around and walked away right then or maybe he should've tossed Mike his clothes and told him they were going home, but he went over there instead. He went right on over to the bed and crawled over the mattress on his hands and knees and he got it then, he really got it: Michael was his brother. Michael was his brother and that meant he couldn't let him lure nubile young women into his shitty vampire lair to suck their blood even if he was 99% sure Mike didn't actually have enough vampire left in him to turn even if he did it. But he wasn't about to take that chance, he told himself, and no one had to die. No one had to be at risk. So he knelt behind Michael and he reopened the cut in his hand _again_ and then he leaned right up against his bare back. 

Michael drank, because he couldn't not. And as he drank, Sam's other arm went around Mike's waist, his hand went down, his fingers wrapped around his cock. He stroked him the way he stroked himself sometimes, tight and slow with a near-painful squeeze down over the head, and Michael fucking whimpered against his palm as all his muscles drew up tense, and he bucked and came, just like that. 

For a second, albeit a long one, they just sat there like that, Mike's mouth still pressed to Sam's palm, Sam's hand still wrapped around Mike's cock. It was pretty absurd, Sam thought, letting his brother drink his blood while he jerked him off, but it still made a kind of sense because hey, no one had died, and it wasn't like Mike would hurt him 'cause he never had, not in the end. He'd done the right thing, he told himself. He'd taken responsibility 'cause Mike had always had his back and now it was time he had his. It was kinda medical, he guessed. It was like tossing him aspirin when he had a headache.

But then he realized: he was hard against the small of Michael's back. He was fucking aching against the small of Michael's back. 

"Shit," he cursed, and he shuffled away, and Mike just sat there right where he was and hung his head down low. And sure, even now he knows that he meant to apologize, but when he opened his mouth no words came out and he thinks maybe that's because he didn't know what he was sorry for. It wasn't like his physiological responses were any more in his control than Mike's were in his and he didn't blame Mike, so how could he blame himself? It wasn't like he'd meant it. It wasn't like it was real. He was just some hormone-crazed teen who needed to get laid.

In the morning, mom made pancakes and they pretended like nothing was wrong. It was easy 'cause Mike was Mike again but Sam could see mom looking at the two of them like Sam was hiding his big brother's drug habit and okay, he guessed in a way he was, just not the way she thought he was. He'd got an addiction, there was something he needed to bring him back around, so he could laugh and kid around and be a real person in the world instead of some fucking ghoulish shade, and Sam got that. He could live with that, he thought. To have his brother back sometimes, he could live with what he had to do. 

But there was another girl there again the next time Sam went out to the hotel. And so Sam sent her away again even though he'd caught them doing it, and he went over there instead. He brought Mike off with his palm pressed tight to Mike's mouth like he was trying to smother him with it, but they both had to know what was going on instead. He jerked Mike off while he was sucking at his palm and he leaned his forehead down between Mike's shoulders after and he told him, "No more strangers, Mike. I mean it." 

Four nights later, there was another girl. They were halfway undressed and making out when Sam got there and he tossed her out just like the others and Mike rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands like there was nothing else in the world he could think to do but that. Then he went down on his side in the bed and so Sam scooched up behind him, got his palm to Mike's mouth and his hand to Mike's dick and he came like that, not even a minute after. There'd always been something about sex and death and blood and all that shit that tied in all together in all the books Sam had read, the vampires books he'd checked out of the library like they'd piece together into some kind of an undead instruction manual. But in the flesh that link was pretty fucking immediate. 

Three nights later, it wasn't a girl. It wasn't some girl with brown hair and big eyes who looked kinda like Star this time, like he'd picked up some substitute 'cause that made it all better somehow - it was a guy. It was a guy and they were naked and Michael's hands were all over him, there was a tube of lube and a box of condoms on the bed and jeez, somehow that felt worse, ten times worse, twenty, like a fricking punch to the gut. The guy looked up and Sam was scowling at him. He was gone pretty soon after that, and all Mike did was watch him go. He didn't try to stop him.

"Jeez, how many times do we need to go through this?" Sam asked, getting closer, tense, sick. "You don't go to some guy you just met, okay? You find me. I'm your family, Mike. I'm gonna keep you safe." He sighed, ran one hand over his hair, tugged hard like that might help him ground himself, not that it worked. "You need to promise me, okay. No more strangers. You find _me_."

Michael glanced at him then, sidelong, from the bed, then he looked away again. "I was gonna fuck him, Sam," he said, like he couldn't look at him and say it, like gay sex was even the tenth most fucked-up thing they'd had to talk about over the years by then. "He was gonna let me."

"Then you do me instead," Sam said, like it was just that simple somehow. In a way, he guessed it was.

And okay, it was dumb. It was really, really dumb. But he went over there as he pulled off his shirt and he toed off his sneakers, fucking determined, and by the time he reached the bed he'd already gotten his belt unbuckled and his fly unzipped. He pushed his jeans down, caught his underwear along with them, tugged off his socks and discarded the whole mess in a heap on the dusty-ass floor of the buried hotel before he could rethink the whole thing, not like he expected he'd change his mind, 'cause, well, it was Michael, and even tough guys with hero complexes need saving sometimes. If nothing else, comic books have taught him that. 

He crawled over the bed and he settled himself down with his back turned to Michael, up on his knees, both of them stripped right down to their birthday suits. He heard Mike take a breath through his teeth like he didn't know what the hell to do next and then curse as he let it back out and then Mike's hands were on him. They moved up over his hips to frame his waist and he cursed again as he wrapped his arms around Sam's middle and pressed right up against his back, Mike's chest and his abdomen against the line of Sam's spine, his dick resting hard against his ass. Sam's own cock gave a twitch at the feel of it, at the weird goddamn thought of what he'd just told Michael he should do to him so he wouldn't do it to someone else, his stomach all twisted up in knots and his pulse beating double time. But it was the right thing to do, he told himself. It was just like aspirin. He knew what he was doing. 

"Jesus, Mike, will you just..." he said, half-breathless though pretty much nothing had happened except maybe a whole lot had, and Michael reached past him for the lube that was sitting there on the mattress, that Sam had almost knelt on like that wouldn't've made a magnificent mess. Then Mike pushed him down, planted one hand between his shoulderblades and pushed him down onto his hands and knees like he was suddenly angry or he'd lost control or maybe he'd just made a decision. And then Mike spread his cheeks and Jesus, shit, Sam could feel his face flush hot and his cock fill up hard, at least as much from the thought of what they were doing as the reality of it. Mike smeared lube between his cheeks, the chill of it making Sam start, rubbed it against his hole, pushed there like he was still figuring shit out and Sam kinda wondered if he'd even done this before because Sam sure as shit hadn't done it. He hadn't done anything like it, with anyone.

Mike rubbed on more lube and Sam leaned down lower, feeling like a total jackass with his arms on the bed and his head pillowed on them and his ass up in the air, but then he could hear the slick sound of Mike getting the lube all over himself and then jeez, maybe he didn't feel so much of a jerk because Mike pushed the tip of his dick up against Sam's hole, rested it there all blunt and heavy, and then, _then_ , he pushed inside. Sam realized a second too late, mid-groan, that the box of condoms was still sitting there untouched up by the headboard. And then, when Mike was in him, when Mike's hands gripped at his hips and eased him back a little further onto the length of his cock, when he was opened up wide, he realized he didn't care. 

Michael bucked his hips against him and groaned out loud and for a minute that was what they did: Mike leaned forward and got one hand up to the headboard and he fucked him, slow and hard, the motion of it rocking the bed frame and making Sam's breath come in unsteady little hitches. Sam realized he was pushing back against him, that he could feel the whole length of Mike's cock inside him, the fit tight but he'd expected that. He'd half-expected it to hurt a whole bunch but it didn't, he just felt kinda full and kinda tingly and kept squeezing around him like he couldn't stop himself and shit, maybe he couldn't. But then he shifted and screwed up Mike's rhythm and then he tore the strips off of his palm and that was it, it wasn't about what he wanted. He pushed up and reached back awkwardly and when Michael sucked at his bloody palm his hips jerked hard and he groaned and he came. Sam could feel it, the pulse of Mike's cock in him when he finished, real pornographic shit like the Frog brothers sometimes watched on the VCR behind the comic store counter with the volume switched to mute while their mom and dad were out, except that had only ever been two dudes by accident, that one time. The only TV Sam ever got to watch back then was porno. 

Mike eased Sam up and back against his chest and Sam let him do it. Mike wrapped his arms around Sam's waist from behind again and he let him do that, too, and shit, he was still inside him. They were like that for a while, Sam's boner slowly fading down untouched, till finally Sam's thigh cramped up and they had to move and Mike looked at him as they dressed after, like he was ashamed or guilty or some idiot thing and this wasn't just something they'd had to do, that they'd needed to do so Sam could have his brother back again, just for a while. Sam just flicked him in the chest with his shirt and told him to hurry the hell up, it'd be getting light soon. Michael smiled, albeit kinda faintly. There was blood in the corners of his mouth, so Sam reached up and rubbed it away with his thumbs. 

And then, two days later, there they were again. And there Mike was in bed with a guy that wasn't Sam, again. 

So the guy pulled on his pants, dressed himself real quick, and as he left he muttered something under his breath suspiciously like, "Jackass should've told me he had a boyfriend." Mike must've heard it 'cause he cracked the hell up, freaky erratic laughter just bubbling up on out of him as he pressed his face into his hands and shook, fucking _shook_ , like he'd finally lost it. So, Sam went over. As soon as his hand touched Michael's shoulder, the laughter stopped. 

"What did I say last time?" Sam said. 

Michael sighed. His head bowed lower. "No more strangers," he replied, from behind his hands. 

"And who was that guy with the shitty khaki pants?"

"A stranger." 

Sam rested his forehead down against Mike's shoulder. He rested one hand against the small of Mike's back. "Jeez, Mike, am I the only one who sees a problem with that?" he asked.

Mike didn't reply, and he guessed he knew why. They both saw problems with all of it, every last bit of it. None of it was right. Nothing had been since the day they'd moved to Santa Carla. If they'd gone anywhere else in the world, maybe they'd've been okay.

That night, Sam's hand was too damn sore for him to open it back up again and so he heated up the blade of his penknife over a cigarette lighter he'd picked up who the hell even knew where. He cut himself across his collarbone where it wouldn't show under his shirt and Mike licked up the blood that ran down over his chest, and Sam tangled his fingers in Mike's hair while he did it. Mike came over Sam's hand, rested his forehead down against his bare chest once he was done. And then they put on their clothes and they went home. 

Two nights later, he heard Mike's door open up sometime past midnight. There was a pause right after, no footsteps in the hall, and then Sam's door squeaked slowly open. Mike came in. He sat down on Sam's bed in the dark, his head in his hands. 

"Help me," he said, just like saying the words made him hurt or made him angry, or maybe it was just he hated himself for saying them. Maybe he hated himself for having to. 

Sam's heart hammered hard. "Let's go," he said. It wasn't like he could turn him away; Mike had finally done like he'd asked him to.

Out in the hotel, they undressed each other. They pulled off each other's t-shirts and they unbuckled each other's belts and when they were naked, Michael brushed his fingers over the dressing at Sam's collarbone. By then, Sam had grown so much Michael was only a couple of inches taller than he was. If he'd hit the weights like Mike had used to do, they'd maybe've been around about the same size, too, but Sam still had more in common physically with the couple of guys Mike had been planning to screw and oh Jesus, right then he had to wonder, what if Mike had gone for them _because_ they looked like him? They'd both been slim and small and blond and tanned, just the way he was. Except there was no time to even really think the thought because then it hit him: he'd never been there from the start before. He'd never been the one Mike chose, just the one who'd come along before things could get ugly. He had no idea what he should expect. 

He reopened the cut at his collarbone but Mike just let it bleed down his chest. One of Mike's hands went to the nape of his neck instead and then he kissed him, he pressed his mouth to his and he _kissed_ him and jeez, Mike's other hand went down between Sam's thighs and his fingers wrapped around his dick and Jesus, fuck, Sam pushed him back. There was a print of Sam's blood on Mike's chest he'd been so close and there was a look of abject horror on Mike's face and Sam took a deep, halting breath. Maybe it was then he knew, he thinks. He'd made the mistake of thinking it wasn't personal before that, or at least convincing himself it wasn't, that it was just biological, physiological impulses. And sure, to an extent that was true, but it was so far from the whole truth of it that it practically needed bussing in from out of state. It wasn't just sex Mike wanted, needed, whatever the term for it was - it wasn't sex in the abstract. It was sex _with him_. And Jesus, fuck, Sam wanted it too. He wanted _him_. He wasn't sure how much he'd ever wanted anyone else, though he guessed he was young, that might've changed.

Sam shook his head. He chuckled. Because twisted the fuck up as that was, it still wasn't the weirdest thing that'd ever happened to them. 

"Don't freak out, okay?" Sam said. "I can see you doing it. Cancel that shit right now, Mike. _Right now_." Then he stepped back up and blood be damned though the cut stung like hell and he kissed him, not that he had a clue what he was doing but he figured he'd figure that out as he went along. He pushed Michael down on the bed and he followed him down. He pushed Mike's thighs apart and he settled down between them. And Mike watched him, Mike let him do it, though Sam couldn't've called him impassive 'cause he brought up his knees to frame Sam's thighs, feet flat on the bed, his hands went up to Sam's biceps, and when Sam reached for the lube he nodded tightly to let him know that was okay, somehow that was fine, at least relatively. 

Sam fucked him. It was kinda hard at first with Michael on his back 'cause the angles were all wrong but then Mike pulled his knees up higher and Sam got in underneath them and then it all made a whole lot more sense. He lubed himself and ran his slick fingers between Mike's cheeks and all the time the look on Mike's face was fucking dangerous, tight, teeth bared, half wild. He pushed into him, faltering a couple of times before he was in all the way and Mike shuddered in a breath and so did he because shit, for a first time it was fucking insane. Then Sam moved. He rocked against him for starters then there was a kind of a momentum to it, it got faster, harder, till Sam's face was flushed and so was Mike's and fuck, Mike's hands were so tight at his biceps and Mike's ass was so tight around his cock and all Sam could think to do was get one hand to the cut at his collarbone then smear blood straight across Mike's mouth. Mike cried out loud and low just like it hurt him, like it was the best damn thing he'd ever felt or the worst or both, and he came with a hot damn splash against Sam's chest. He went so damn tight around Sam that it almost hurt and he came too, shoved right up inside him, so hard he was pretty sure he'd wrenched his back in the process. 

He pulled out after and he stretched out on his back right next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and Mike's eyes were closed as he pretty much panted to catch his breath. And when they stood, once they'd sorted Sam's clothes from Michael's and then put them on, stiffly, when they were ready to leave, Sam grabbed Mike's arm. He made him look at him. 

"You don't do that shit with anybody else, okay?" he said, not really hitting stern, just halfway past pleading with an edge of a warning to it. Mike set his jaw. He swallowed as he met Sam's eyes, and then he nodded. When they kissed, it tasted metallic, like the time he'd licked his mom's car keys back when he was six years old or nails in his mouth while they'd been hammering in new boards at grandpa's place. It tasted bloody. They went home.

"I think I'm gonna go stay with dad for a while," Michael said, the next night, over a shitty game of cards they'd both won and lost so many times they'd agreed they should just stop counting. 

Sam didn't look up 'cause right then he wasn't sure he could. "No," he said. 

"I've thought about it a lot," Mike said. "I'll stay till I've saved enough to get a place of my own then I'll move out. I'm pretty sure I can find a job out there. It's not like Santa Carla. I could make decent money."

Sam shook his head as he sorted the cards in his hand. "No," he said. 

"I think it's really for the best."

"It's not." 

"It's not?"

"It's not." Sam looked up, sharply. He tugged the collar of his shirt out wide to show the dressing underneath. "You need me," he said, but maybe that wasn't true, and inside of him there was a sick, dark flutter of something kinda close to cold panic. He hadn't done all the things he'd done to lose Mike like that. But they didn't say any more about it. 

The next night, he was in the hotel waiting when Mike got there. He was naked on the bed, clothes discarded like a trail across the floor. When Mike came in, he was sitting back against the headboard, dick in hand, thighs spread out wide. He'd been teasing himself for a fucking hour. It was a miracle he hadn't come already. It was a miracle he hadn't already come twice.

"Jesus," Michael said, like a curse under his breath. "Jesus Christ, Sam." But he took off his clothes on the way to the bed and he joined him anyway. He put his mouth on Sam's cock and he sucked him till he came and then, after, Sam drew him back against his chest and fed him from his palm again. After, when he'd fed and when he'd come in bursts over Sam's free hand, Sam wrapped his arms around him. 

"You need me," he said, like he was trying to convince himself as much as Mike. 

Mike nodded slowly, leaning there against him. And in the end, all he said was, "Yeah."

When Mike tried to leave four days later, while everyone else was out of the house, Sam bit down hard at the inside of his cheek till his whole mouth was bloody. When they kissed it was all metal and heat mixed up with desperation and Sam's hand got in under the waist of Mike's jeans, wrapped around him, stroked him even after he came, made him shiver against him, made him fucking cling. They were in Mike's room and Sam pushed him down on the bed on the rucked-up sheets. Sam had shut the door to keep Nanook out and that was good 'cause he straddled Mike's thighs and once they'd undressed, pulled awkwardly at each other's clothes, contorted till they were naked, it wasn't long till he had Mike hard again. He lubed Mike's cock and rode him till he came, _again_. But this time, for the first time, it was all without the blood. 

Without the blood, it was different. Without the blood, somehow it felt like sex in a way it hadn't before, like that even made sense to Sam, let alone in general, and when Michael came it came on so much slower, creeping up, his breath hitching and his hips bucking up and his muscles getting tighter, bit by bit. There was a sheen of sweat standing out on their skin from it, from the movement and the pressure and the summer afternoon heat, prickling at Sam's brow and at his back, and then Mike came with a groan and a hard arch of his back and Sam jerked himself off over Mike's chest and shit, after, once they'd wiped themselves down with the tissues Mike kept real sensibly stationed by the bed, they stretched out and let the fan blow warm air over their hot skin. 

"Don't go," Sam said, to Mike, to the ceiling. 

"Because I need you?" 

"Because we need each other." 

Sam turned his head. Michael turned his, too, and they looked at each other in the afternoon sunlight. Michael smiled. Sam smiled, too, and he thought maybe, just maybe, this time Mike was there to stay. 

"Don't go," Sam said, letting his smile fade a little. 

Mike nodded. "I'm not going anywhere," he said. And for a second it was like he had his brother back again. 

Michael didn't leave. Michael hasn't left. 

Sometimes he tries but he never gets far and Sam thinks it's kinda ironic how he was the one who never wanted to move to Santa Carla but now Mike's the one who wants to leave. He takes his bike and he rides up the coast, sometimes on the road, sometimes down the beach till he hits a cove he can't ride past. Sam finds motel receipts in his jeans pockets sometimes for the places where he stays but other times he figures Mike probably sleeps on the beach, by the ocean, by a fire or shivering under his leather jacket. These days, he doesn't worry when he leaves. After the first couple of times, Sam realized he'd always come back. He figures it's because Mike doesn't want to kill and he knows the one person in the whole damn world he could never kill is Sam. He's his brother. He could never hurt him. 

Sam graduated pretty near the top of his class then went to work in the comic store full time and everyone said that was such a shame, such a waste, but he doesn't really look at it that way. Over the next summer, after graduation, he and Michael got enough cash together to rent a place of their own, a shitty tumbledown old place kinda like grandpa's but they fixed up the plumbing and every time the fuses blow, Mike fixes shit up until it works again. The place was so damn cheap they'd scraped enough cash together for a deposit in three years, took out a mortgage and bought it from their landlord who was pretty glad to get it off his books. Now Sam's twenty-five years old and Mike has real trade certifications, works as a plumber and fixes roofs and all that shit, and the place has been theirs just long enough now that they've got it just how they like it. Edgar and Alan are jealous; they still live with their mom and dad, even now. 

There's two bedrooms but one's just for show and most nights they sleep there, but sometimes they take their beat-up third-hand pickup out to the hotel. They wash the sheets at home then take them back and sometimes they sleep there instead. Sam's nowhere near dumb enough not to know they shouldn't, that maybe one day the whole place will slide right on down into the ocean and take them down there with it. He's not dumb enough not to know that Mike's got memories there that he should move on from but he maybe never will. He's not dumb enough not to know this is all pretty far from what's healthy, but this is what they've got: they've got a vat of holy water in their basement and they've got a couple dozen well-carved stakes, they've got a place of their own with closets stuffed full of grandpa's creepy taxidermy, and they've got each other. They should pick up and leave town, just go, get away, but Sam knows they never will. Santa Carla's their home.

Tonight, they're at the hotel. They took cartons of Chinese food with them but when they got there Mike couldn't eat a bite of it and Sam had to figure it was some shit to do with David and with Star and all the other vampire sons of bitches who'll always be right there inside Mike's head no matter how many years go by. So they went to bed, got naked, climbed in, and Sam opened up the palm of his hand just like he did the first time, eight years ago or so ago, a new penknife he ran across an old scar, though he's got a whole lot of those by now. Mike still comes when he drinks pretty instantly, every time, and so forty seconds ago he came for a fourth time. Sam thinks it does Mike good to get worn out sometimes, does him good to give him more blood sometimes, 'cause all it means is Sam lives on iron-rich food and afterwards Mike smiles and it's like he's got his brother back just like he used to be. It's Mike from before all that vampire bullshit. It's the Mike he's wanted since before he knew what wanting was. 

Sometimes Sam wonders if it's him that brings Mike back or if it's just his blood but his blood's _their_ blood, so maybe that's it. Maybe they don't look a whole lot alike but maybe their blood does, where it counts, maybe something in Michael recognizes something in him from back when he was all the way human. But that's probably just twisted, fucked-up logic like you'd find inside a horror comic on the bargain rack and really all it is is Mike's all twisted up in love with his little brother the way Sam is with him. He knows him, after all. He's not some girl he met fifteen minutes ago, across a crowded room. He's not Star and he's not David and not any of the one night stands he probably had before they found this thing they've got. Mike's his brother. He's the only one that counts. 

Sam doesn't believe in love at first sight. He believes to love someone you really have to know them, inside out, good and bad, past the bullshit lies they sometimes tell you and past the ones they tell themselves. Mike says he's okay but he's not. He never will be again, not for keeps, not for real, and so Sam will do what he has to to keep what's human in him alive. He can't go losing him again. That shit would just be careless.

He turns out the camping light they use in there and they stretch out to go to sleep the way they always do. When Mike's fed from him, they both sleep pretty soundly. Sometimes that's the only way either of them can get to sleep.

Sam isn't sure when he realized but once he did, everything started to fall into place. Vampire or not, Michael is his brother. And his brother means the whole damn world to him.

**Author's Note:**

> The title here comes from a quote from Robert Frost: "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on".


End file.
